


Speculative evolution of Goa'uld and Unas

by mysterytour



Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Evolution, Gen, Goa'uld, Unas, paleobiology, phylogeny, speculative biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24916732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytour/pseuds/mysterytour
Summary: Walking With Goa'ulds, Basically.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Evolution of Goa'uld and Unas

**Author's Note:**

> Bibliography:
> 
> YouTube: Moth Light Media, PBS Eons, Ben G Thomas  
> Web pages: Stargate fandom wiki, good old-fashioned wikipedia, Enchanted learning  
> TV: Walking With Dinosaurs.
> 
> Terminology:  
> ma: mega annum (million years)  
> ka: kilo annum (thousand years)  
> BCE: Before Common Era

230ma

Earth. The vast, arid supercontinent of Pangaea is surrounded by the vast, unbroken Panthalassa ocean on all sides; its desert interior sees almost no rainfall in a century. The Permian-Triassic extinction event wiped out 96% of marine life, including the trilobites, and 70% of land-based life some 50 million years ago, but this is not a dead world. In a coastal forest, Coelophysis stalks something that wriggles in a murky pool. Scleromochlus leaps to catch a flying thing in the desert dusk. In a dry riverbed, Effigia twists dry flesh from a long dead Lystrosaur. Convergent evolution has thus far taken these animals to similar body-plans, but things are about to change. Coelophysis, the rarity of the day is one of the earliest dinosaurs. Scleromochlus, progenitor of pterosaurs, will soon take to the sky. Effigia’s time on Earth will be much shorter. This cousin to crocodylomorph’s future lies thousands of lightyears away...

200.24ma

In a stand of gingkos, Effigia shelters from the midday sun. By now, there are only a handful of her kind left on Earth. Without intervention their lineage would be gone in decades. But there is something else with two legs standing in the shade. Effigia watches, still as a stone. Is it food? The creature, with its naked, scale-less paws and flattened snout watches in return. It has something—some kind of funny stone—in its hand. 

A tremor in the ground spurs Effigia to action—she runs. Ancients have arrived on Earth. Only days ago these strange, brainy creatures triggered an increase in tectonic activity, setting into motion the breakup of Pangaea. In the next few million years a great rift will form, creating two new continents: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. This cataclysmic event will cause an extinction, and the Ancients know this. The one in the stand of gingkos will come to love the endless forms who sprang from this rock. She and the others agree that they must act to preserve as much as possible.

It takes a mere 30 years to transform P3X-888 from lifeless rock to a biosphere, similar to that of late-Triassic Earth, with its own Pangaea and Panthalassa. Effigia’s grandchildren, laid on Earth, will hatch on P3X-888 and know only the light of its sun. The one Effigia met in the stand of gingkos will stay for another thirty years to ensure that the eco-system has stabilised before leaving forever.

The eco-system of late-Triassic P3X-888 is not a perfect facsimile of Mother Earth. The ocean has its reefs, the coasts their woodlands. Countless species of flora, five thousand of fauna, millions of archaea and bacteria have been transplanted, but far more have been left behind. 

On Earth, dinosaurs diversify to become the dominant form of life on land. P3X-888, it is crocodylomorphs.

180-170ma

Of its own accord, P3X-888’s Pangaea begins to break up.

Much like Earth, Jurassic P3X-888 of the Jurassic is a warm, wet world. A minor extinction event is quickly proceeded by species radiation. Effigia, who evolved to spend life on land, has adapted to the extinction of its prey by finding most of its food in rivers. Unlike its crocodile cousins, Effigia exploits the marine environment but does not adapt to a marine lifestyle. One of the reasons is the success of temnospondyls, large ancient amphibians, now extremely rare on Earth, have diversified and fill most predatory niches in aquatic environments.

When times are easy, Effigia uses its snout to poach fish and arthropods with ease. During summertime, when the water levels are low, it uses its forelimbs to dig for hibernating lungfish and other creatures. This change in behaviour has created selective pressure; Effigia of this time have longer arms then their predecessors and more flexible fingers.

Lungfish are occasionally parasitised by a kind of polychaete, or bristle worm. This organism is unusual for its class as it lives in a fresh water environment. Chitinous bristles aid locomotion and create an appearance of furriness. The bristle worm’s mouthparts are ringed by four thornlike projections ring the mouth projections that it uses for grasping prey and embedding itself in the Lungfish’s gills. Like some modern bristle worms, this species is venomous. Occasionally, an infected lungfish is eaten by an Effigia and takes up residence in the organism’s gut. Usually, irritation caused by the worm’s bristles mean that it is passed within days. Those individuals with shorter or finer bristles are able to stay within the host Effigia for a number of months; these individuals are more successful. 

160-155ma

P3X-888 becomes much drier for a period of 5 million years. During this period, Effigia die out everywhere but the norther most reaches of the northerly continent. Some waterways dry up altogether. Bristle worms spend a longer period of their lives within Effigia’s gut, where they shelter through the dry season and are dispersed lakes and rivers where they can reproduce. 

As the worm adapts to a parasitic lifestyle, the bristles reduce and are eventually lost altogether.

30ma

Volcanic activity forms a bridge between the northerly continent and the easterly continent. A great interchange of fauna takes place over the course of several million years. Crown-mammals from the easterly continent outcompete many of the crocodylomorphs on the northerly. Effigia, however, survives. 

28ma

Parthenogenetic reproduction arises in bristle worms. 

22ma 

By now, adult bristle worms can spend their entire adult lives inside Effigia, leaving only to reproduce. 

20ma

Bristle worms transition from parasitising the gut to the nervous system. This makes it impossible for the worm to be dislodged by bowel movements. The venom, historically causing pain and paralysing its prey, now acts as a muscle relaxant and anaesthetic to prevent the host from biting or removing the symbiote as it burrows through the trachea into the brain stem. 

18-16ma

Bristle worms evolve the capacity to ‘highjack’ Effigia’s brainstem and manually control its body. 

Effigia and worms enter into an evolutionary arms race of intellect. Only Effigia who are able to outwit the increasingly resourceful worms and avoid being taken as host are able to reproduce (Effigia reproduction not being a concern of the worms).

9ma-0.9ma

An ice age puts further selective on Effigia, who become stockier and less gracile. Effigia’s gate becomes more upright and its brain volume increases exponentially, similar to that of the Ancients who ceded their planet. The northerly continent is covered by glaciers, forcing Effigia the move down into the lower parts of the easterly continent. Bristle worms move with them.

4ma

Tool use is first seen in Effigia.

2ma

The first modern Unas appears, having evolved from Effigia. 

1.5ma

The first modern Goa’uld appear, evolving from bristle worms.

0.9-0.2ma 

P3X-888 begins to warm. Glacial wastelands are slowly replaced by steppe.

0.2ma

Glaciers have retreated to the norther most parts of the northerly continent. The northerly continent and upper easterly continents remain as steppe until present day. The lower easterly becomes warm, wet and densely forested.

Goa’uld became incredibly physically resilient in order to survive significant changes in their environment, from wet, to arid, to frigid. Individuals live no more than several hundred years in the wild, however when implanted in hosts, can live up to two thousand years. 

30ka

Goa’uld discover the Astria Portia. Goa’uld spend the next 20ka learning how to manipulate ancient technology and colonising the galaxy. They remain bound to P3X-888 as a source of hosts until discovering Earth around 10kBCE, when they make the switch to homo sapiens.


	2. Notes on the Astria Porta network

180-5ma 

The Ancients establish the Astria Porta (Stargate) network throughout the Milky Way, terraforming tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of planets. Generally, the Ancients appear to have ceded the galaxy with flora and fauna gathered from Earth. 175-50ma being a relatively sparse period of production, with the majority of worlds being terraformed and linked to the Astria Porta network 40-10ma. 

Very few worlds established earlier than 60ma are known to have survived to present day. This is likely to be due to the small number of worlds terraformed in the early colonisation period, however there are other factors: the abandonment of planets unable to sustain life without direct intervention, natural phenomena such as supernova and deliberate intervention by interstellar civilisations. The Asgard record a number of such instances. On one occasion, an unnamed civilisation appear to have destroyed a planet whose orbit appeared to interfere with travel between their own world and an asteroid belt, rich in metallic ores. These sapients became extinct around 100,000ya for unknown reasons, leaving few traces of their lives, save for a handful of shipwrecked mining vessels and a field of naquadah infused debris that orbits its star in place of a planet.


End file.
